


“do not be led by others”

by clickingkeyboards



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Arguments, Dinners, Disagreements, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hinduism, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23865799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Eating in a diner before boarding the SS. Hatshepsut to Egypt, Hazel can only watch as her father comes to odds with one of her friends over an early lunch.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady/Hazel Wong
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	“do not be led by others”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AwkwardSauce0602](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardSauce0602/gifts), [WritesEveryBlueMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritesEveryBlueMoon/gifts).



“This is an excellent English diner, Hazel,” my father said, scrutinising me as I laid my napkin out on my lap. “I remember coming here on my summer holidays once, a delightful place.”

“I don’t think summer holidays suit Hazel and I very well, Mr Wong,” Daisy said, a twinkle in her eye as she nudged my arm. I felt myself sparkle back at her. “Christmas holidays are much better.  _ Especially _ when you’re taking us on them.”

With a look to let her know that she was laying it on frightfully thick, I smiled and added, “And even better when they’re not cold!”

Sighing, Amina tucked a flyaway bit of dark hair behind her ear. “Egypt is going to be gloriously warm. And to think that England is so cold all the time!”

“I agree,” Alexander pitched in from across the table, playing with the cuff of his fitted shirt.

“You’re always ridiculously cold, Alex, it’s  _ insufferable _ ,” George said, raising an eyebrow with a smile. “Water?”

When Alexander nodded, he took the glass bottle and removed the attached stopper, pouring it with a finessed flick of his wrist at the end that I found odd. “There. Don’t spill it, I know what you’re like.”

“Have you poured wine before, Mr Mukherjee?” my father inquired, watching as George set the bottle down with a familiar care that I recognised: Bridget settling down bottles of port after pouring for Aunt Lucy and Uncle Felix.

“Oh! Yes, I pour for my parents, now that my brother isn’t about to do it. I don’t... my family has never drunk much alcohol, but there are plenty of dinner guests to entertain.” The Mukherjees are both high-society, a doctor and a woman of high status on many London citizens committees. It makes absolute sense that George is their son: sharp as a samurai sword, a genius with wit, and headstrong to a fault. The reserved and mild-mannered Harold Mukherjee, on the other hand, seems to have come from different parents entirely.

My father raised an eyebrow, and I could tell that he was about to start one of his famous inquisitions. “You don’t have servants at your house?” he asked.

“My father doesn’t believe in servants, sir,” George said, with a particular cadence that I knew meant that he agreed with that view. “He says it isn’t right to keep people on like that, given the way the British have been working our people ragged since India was colonised. It’s  _ relentless _ , and he believes that we would be just as bad as them if we hired someone, kept them on and away from their people, and worked them for so little. We hire people instead, cooks for big events and a cleaner once a week, but we don’t keep anyone on in the house permanently.”

“You don’t have servants, George?” May asked loudly, sipping noisily from her glass of water. “We have hundreds!”

“We— ah— we don’t have a compound, May, or as many family members, so we can manage without,” he said with tact in his voice.

Clearly unimpressed with this view — I cringed, as my family has servants and worker and cooks in the  _ hundreds _ , and George didn’t know that until a few moments ago because it is so very un-English to talk about it — my father continued, “Why, how many of you are there in the house?”

“My father, my mother, myself, and until last year, my older brother. He’s a scholar at Cambridge,” George replied, and I breathed out a sigh of relief as Daisy took my hand. My father studied at Cambridge himself, and hearing anything about it instantly calms him down.

As expected, he brightened and said, “Oh! What does your brother study?”

“History, and he stays at St. Johns,” George said, taking a drink of water.

“Doesn’t your brother study history, Daisy? Are they friends?” he inquired.

This, of course, set the five of us off in splutters and giggles. Even Amina, as Daisy had quietly told her about it on an afternoon in Deepdean town when we took tea in the Willow Tea Rooms. Alexander was the only one moderately composed, with his lips pressed together and a hand on his glass. “Sorry, Mr Wong. Call it an inside joke.”

Amina smiled. “Oh, look, the food’s coming!”

Swallowing a smirk, Alexander said, “Yes. Harold and Bertie are great friends. It’s only funny because it’s so odd to us that they are, given that they’re such different people.”

“Salad and soup with parsnips?” asked the waiter.

“That would be mine,” George said, raising a hand and a challenging eyebrow at the waiter astonished to hear his accent coming out of someone with his face. “Thank you.”

“Why the salad?” my father asked pleasantly, but the tone told me what I’d feared: that George and my father were not going to get along this holiday.

He shared a look with Alexander that said as much. “I’m a Hindu. It’s a sin to eat the flesh of anything that was once alive.”

“You can’t even eat char sui bao?” Rose asked curiously, almost embarrassed to intrude into a man’s conversation. 

“No, May, he can’t. It has pork in,” I said, patting her hand while reaching across Daisy to do so.

“There are plenty of alternatives,” Alexander added, and I was surprised to hear him speak. He never likes to cut in between obvious tension; it makes him anxious. Then I looked at George and saw why: there was a tension in his jaw and fire in his eyes, and I knew that he was swallowing down the cutting words that he can muster when he wants to. Alexander knew that too, except that he knows George well enough to know the exact words that would spill out if George opened his mouth. He could feel himself being challenged by my father, and Alexander didn’t know how much more he could take. 

“Are they nice?” Rose asked.

“Yes, they are, though I will confess to not liking some of the more... exotic things that the Mukherjees cook up.” He waved a hand and smiled charmingly, and I felt myself melt from the inside out and burn from my cheeks down to my toes.

“That’s because you have a white palette, Alex. You consider  _ salt _ a spice!” George retorted, and we all broke out into wild laughter. Even my father chuckled into his hand.

“Are your parents Hindus too?” my father inquired pleasantly to George, and I felt glad that the conversation was forgotten as we all settled down to eat. “May, don’t eat with your fingers.”

“I’ll help her with her cutlery, Mr Wong,” Daisy offered, moving over with her own knife and fork to show May how to properly cut up a sausage.

“Yes, they are,” George said, and Alexander reached up a hand to squeeze his shoulder before bringing it back down to start eating. “Harold and I were raised into the religion.”

“Oh, you were raised into religion?” he asked, and I instantly felt a twist of sour panic in my stomach. My father is more opposed to that than anything. “I would never do that with my Hazel, but of course that’s a personal choice. I think it’s an awful thing to force religion onto children. Bad parenting, in my opinion.”

At those words, I felt George bearing up. I had never seen all of his defences come up at once so abruptly, and I had never heard such a spittingly poisonous comment from him as the one that came out of his mouth in that moment. “I would also think that it’s bad parenting to have suspected your own child of murder, sir, but each to their own.”

There was absolute silence.

“I did it, Father!” May said, pointing her fork, which she was gripping like a sabre, down at her messily cut-up food, a contrast to the one perfectly dissected sausage that Daisy has cut up while showing her how to do it. 

“Very good, May,” my father managed in a stiff voice. “Miss Wells, thank you.”

“It’s not a problem, Mr Wong,” she managed, staring at George with wide eyes. Alexander’s eyes were wide too, and his breathing had his chest heaving with barely concealed panic.

I thought for a moment about how cruel that comment was, how absolutely wicked it was for George to say it. How dare he say that to my father, even if it was true?

And then I thought.

He had not insulted George’s race, unlike so many others. Although the hurt about that cuts him deeply, his race is on the surface, the colour of his skin and the texture of his thatches of dark hair, tacked onto his person as a surname and following him around inside the smell of imported cologne.

His religion is a deep part of him, influencing what he says and does, how he moves and detects, the way he sees the world and its life and the death in the corpses that we come across, and where he believes their souls have left their bodies to go. I know that he keeps a copy of the Vedas scriptures in his pocket, and Alexander tells me that George prays twice a day at Weston like clockwork. To attack his religion and his parents is to pull at his heartstrings, and I had never heard someone do it so callously before. I had never heard someone come after that part of him with words before, only that it’s done with a cane and a bible to the back of his head. 

George had been cruel, unearthed one horrid aspect of a case that I like to forget, but he did it as a guard against an attack on his core beliefs and that, I thought, was just.

“George,” I said carefully, watching as he picked at a parsnip, chewing it painfully slowly, “are you alright?”

He swallowed with a shudder. “Yes, Hazel. I am. Just... some textures of food don’t agree with me, is all, they make me feel quite shuddery and wrong. But I shall bear up because it does taste excellent.” An obvious lie. 

Rose gave a cry and made a disappointed noise as some gravy spilled from her plate and onto the table, and my father rushed to hand her tissues and call for a waiter. In that moment of distraction, Alexander snatched the parsnips from George’s plate. “Are you alright?” he whispered, in tones I was not supposed to hear.

“Yes, I’m fine, Alex.”

Alexander put a hand on George’s shoulder with immeasurable care, leaning closer to him. “I’m sure that we can go and find a Mandir before we leave, for you to pay your respects. I’ll even come in with you.”

There was a long pause. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, Hazel.”

I started; he knew I was listening. “It’s alright. He attacked your religion.”

“I attacked  _ him _ , Hazel. I’m sorry.”

“You had a good cause,” I replied before my father turned back to the table.

George winked at us, and Daisy winked back.


End file.
